Life In Detail
by AriaAdagio
Summary: Post-Save Me. 3-shot. Derek and Meredith get to know each other. Set after he shows her his trailer at the end of Save Me.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Notes: This is a 3 part fic inspired by a fellow Grey's fan, who wanted to know just what happened after Derek showed Meredith his trailer._ _I hope you enjoy it!_

* * *

The man she had grown to know as Derek Shepherd, snarky, arrogant, and unflappable, abandoned her that night. The Derek she knew took her hand, walked with her through the wet grass, and guided her with certainty onto his deck. But his presence flagged. A straight-lipped expression of worry cowed his definitive that's-all-you've-earned-for-now grin. Her Derek Shepherd departed, and in his place, he left a man who lacked humorous commentary, sexual innuendo, or words of any kind.

He was a stranger.

Her heart began to thump at the peculiar shift in his temperament. This wasn't normal. Not normal at all. Derek Shepherd, if-you-know-me-you'll-love-me, couldn't even fake humility.

She'd thought.

He pulled the screen door outward. The hinges squawked, disrupting the soft lament of nighttime crickets and fauna. She became intensely aware of how much space he gave her, and instead of stepping over the threshold, she watched him.

He fidgeted, looking in every direction but at her. First, his free hand straddled his pocket. Then he touched his face, swiping at some unseen disturbance near his nose.

As she drowned herself in his apprehensiveness, she had the sense that she danced on the head of a pin. He was expecting her not to like his home. To cut and run now that he'd laid himself bare for her. Why?

"I know it's not much," he said.

Not much, she wanted to scoff. He might not have a house, but it was a lot of freaking land. He had room for just about anything. Hell, he had room for a pony. Two ponies. A herd. All he needed was a fence to keep them in. How was that not much?

She searched his face. His stark, blue stare wandered across her features. Not much. He meant it. She sensed no effort to downplay anything. He truly thought... not much. Was he used to the comforts of excess money? Or was this some sort of wacky, I'm-the-provider, machismo apology. He thought she should have a beautiful, big house, and he couldn't give her one right now.

The idea was both flattering and infuriating.

Who was this man?

A mind's eye incursion of a loin-clothed Derek, thumping his chest with a growl, drove her lungs to expel a giggle. His body stilled like prey caught knee-deep in predators, and she rushed to shove her outburst back into the horrible mental cave from which it had come.

"Sorry," she muttered. "It's just..."

He watched her, waiting for her to continue, but she couldn't find words. Instead, she reached for him, her fingers brushing the lapel of his shirt in what she hoped would be interpreted as quiet reassurance. Then she took a deep breath and drove herself into his domain.

Shafts of moonlight slanted through the windows, giving her a vague, silvery outline of the space before her. He came into the room behind her, flipping the light switch as he passed the threshold like a wraith.

The intrusion of soft, yellow light sliced through her head, starting at her pupils. She blinked, more from the shock of change than the sharpness of the light itself. She blinked again, aware of his body just behind her, and focused. Assessed.

Her gaze followed the left edge of the trailer, past the wooden table and padded bench seat, through the short hallway that had to be no wider than her hips, give perhaps a foot, and into the rumpled but made bed situated at the back. The pillows sat on top of the bedspread, which was a utilitarian, solid something-color that she couldn't quite identify under this lighting except to tell that it didn't quite match the sheets. Typical guy.

The picture in front of her seemed normal, at first. It did.

And then it didn't.

The nerves she had barely subdued erupted. Who was this man?

"You actually live here?" she blurted.

Who are you?

Silence stretched for a long march of moments before his lip twitched. "I told you it wasn't much," he said, his voice flat. He smiled, but his gaze seemed dejected, and she realized what a crushing blow she must have just dealt, begging to see his house and then saying something so callous. That wasn't how she'd meant it at all.

"No!" she said. "No, it's not that. It's not that at all. It's a beautiful home. It's just..."

She padded forward, her lips parting. The air in the small cabin smelled of lemon Pledge. She ran her index finger across the cool surface of the table by the door. An echo of her skin trailed behind in a line of condensation, but it evaporated quickly, leaving the surface plain and untouched.

Sterile. That was the word she looked for.

He had fewer material possessions on display than a monk would. There were no dirty dishes in the sink. No napkins or newspapers strewn on the table. No pictures hanging anywhere. No knickknacks. No spare watch on the nightstand by the bed. He didn't even have salt and pepper shakers. Surely, he must have salt and pepper? Or a pair of goofy dice over the rear view mirror?

Anything?

The lemon Pledge scent reminded her of a hasty run through with a rag. Got to show the girlfriend some sort of cleaning skills, right? Her frantic thoughts struggled to stuff some logic into the situation, and she imagined him shoving heaps of unsorted clutter into bags and hiding them so she wouldn't think he was a slob. Trailers had luggage compartments, didn't they?

Maybe.

"It's just that it's..." She struggled to say something. Anything.

His eyebrows crept upward expectantly.

"Well, it's empty."

A wry, whuffing breath escaped his lips, and a hint of the usual twinkle in his eyes returned. He sighed. Relief? "Well, I did just move here, Meredith," he said.

Her heart thundered in her chest. He had just moved there. He had. But something screamed at her. It just wasn't normal. This wasn't normal. Had she fallen for an ax-murderer or something? Was this an elaborate setup? She'd trusted him, and he'd lured her there to... to do...

His arms wrapped around her waist, and he pulled her up against him, resting his chin against her ear. God, his body was warm. She relaxed against him, arms resting over his. How could he do that with just a sigh and the warmth of his skin?

"I am **not** an interior decorator," he rumbled against her ear.

_Damn it, Jim. I'm a doctor, not a..._

She couldn't help it. She laughed and tilted her cheek against his neck. The sharp prick of five-o'clock stubble didn't even bother her. She kissed his jawline, relishing the sweet salt taste. "Well," she relented. "I guess that's true."

The inner cabin began to haze as she relented further, tasting him deeply. He kissed her and kissed her again, and she fell into the motion of raking her fingers through his hair, grinding against his body. The air around them hushed, like the muffled stillness after a fresh snowfall. His soft, insistent panting buffeted her skin. The slip and slide of their lips gave the intervening silence a rhythm. Percussive, almost.

If he was an ax murderer, she decided, then at least she was sure to die in ecstasy. Though, she wondered where he would even hide an ax. There was no clutter. Nothing.

The thought came to her, errant, unwanted, and she murmured, "Where are all your boxes? In storage?"

He stopped with a frustrated half-sigh, half-moan. His forehead met her own and rested there. She stared into his eyes and watched passion melt into turmoil.

"Not exactly," he said. His torso heaved less and less as he caught up with himself.

"What is not exactly?" she asked.

He gave her a quirky smile, but the expression didn't reach his eyes, which seemed dark and... snarly somehow. His frame shuddered as he took a deep breath, but the whole motion seemed stilted and tense, and he didn't answer her question.

"Would you like some coffee?" he asked, his voice rough with something that wasn't lust. Or was she imagining...

The question resurfaced, wrung her out like an old dishrag. She kneaded her fingers together, overcome with nervous energy. Who are you? Except, somewhere in her mental tangle, her train of thought jumped the tracks at a particularly twisty section and found a new direction. No longer who are you, but...

What happened to you?

Bile caught in the back of her throat when she realized that this question, this was the one she should be asking. What happened to you? Why would a man in his late thirties, a well-established brain surgeon of world renown, suddenly uproot himself from a lucrative private practice in Manhattan after having been there since his residency? Why would he be in a bar the night before his first day of work, nursing a single malt scotch, and why go home with the first girl he could get drunk with?

Why would he run?

What happened to you?

"I'm sorry," she said as she sank into the bench seat by the table. "I'm being freakishly nosy."

He laughed, then, though he seemed cautious. "It's all right. Coffee?"

"Is it decaf?"

"Sure."

His fingers danced across the cabinets, and she couldn't help but stare intently, waiting for the compact world behind them to be revealed to her. A whisper of sound heralded the door as it panned open. She caught a vague glimpse of white, a cereal box perhaps, and a smaller row of little bottles. Spices? Perhaps he had salt and pepper after all. Just hidden.

Did he like to cook? She'd never asked. They rarely spent a day together where one or the other wasn't exhausted. They had sex, and they slept. They did not have dinner.

"It's not what you expected," he said as he scooped some ground coffee from a small paper bag. The bitter, warm scent of it tickled her nose.

She steepled her fingers. "I didn't expect anything, Derek."

"This place," he said. He paused mid-scoop, and his gaze wandered. "It's quiet. I needed..." She watched his lips form a word he didn't say. The moment stretched before he blinked, and, re-animated, began to move again.

She realized they had never actually had coffee before. Breakfast coffee, yes, but that accompanied groggy consumption of cereal. Well, at least groggy on her part. He always seemed chipper. Freaking morning people. Regardless, morning coffee wasn't social coffee. It was sustenance coffee. It was I-need-it-or-I-can't-function coffee.

This was talking coffee. The kind you invited a boy up to your room for when you wanted him to stay the night and couldn't quite muster the nerve to explain that the invitation was really a superfluous bullet point on the way to sex. Right? This didn't feel like a bullet point, though, nor did it feel superfluous.

She knew now that he liked horrible music, a boring book, and the color indigo. He liked to fly fish, and he had a slew of relatives. Infinite more things than she usually knew about her sex partners. Anything more than zero would be infinite.

The world blurred into a series of taps and shuffles and clinks as he replaced the filter and dumped the coffee into a tiny coffeemaker on his counter top. He turned, smacking his hands together as if to say, "Well, dirty work is done," and leaned back against the counter top, the backs of his elbows propping up his upper body in a haughty, slanting pose.

His face time with the cabinets while he'd been making coffee had apparently been enough to melt the unexpected, dour tension out of him, leaving her with relaxed perfection. She couldn't stop her eyes from roaming from booted toe to khaki-hugged hip. The tails of his shirt peaked out from underneath his dark, wool sweater.

Jesus, but the man could work a lean.

She licked her lips. "That's a cute coffeemaker."

"Cute?" He glanced at it with a frown. It burbled. "Don't call it cute! You'll hurt its feelings."

"I'm surprised a Manhattanite like yourself didn't splurge on an Espresso maker," she said.

He snorted. "I'm not sure an Espresso maker would fit with the closet-on-wheels motif."

"I like the trailer."

"Hmm," he purred. "It's rustic."

"And it's you."

He pondered that for a moment, as if surprised by her observation. His head tilted. His eyes closed. He listened. She listened, too. Listened to the world outside. Crickets, monotonous and symphonic all at once. Twigs snapping in the distance. A breeze whispering through the clearing. The lamentation outside narrowed in focus to the rush of blood in her ears and the sound of her heart. Beating.

His eyes wandered open as if he woke from dreams, only to find himself still languishing in one upon awakening. "I guess it is me," he murmured.

She caressed the buttons of her white coat, undoing them one by one. Rolling her shoulders, she pushed the garment back against the seat to free her arms. Her heart flipped at the way he watched her, expression hooded and desirous, the way he committed the lines of her body to memory, the way his devoted attention declared her a shrine. He watched her like she was the only thing in the room worth watching at all.

Her voice cracked at first, and she had to clear her throat. "Do you like to cook?" she managed.

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "I like to grill," he clarified, and her mind's eye scolded her for not paying better attention. A grill. He had a grill by the door outside on the deck. Of course he liked to grill.

"I'm not very culinary," she confessed.

His lip twitched. "I'd expect that from anyone who can be content with cold pizza for breakfast."

"I don't bake or cook or... I make cereal," she rambled. "Sometimes."

He laughed. "I know."

"It gets boring. Cereal, I mean."

"I know."

"You might have to feed me in the future."

He shrugged, his expression of mirth deepening. The subtle lines around his eyes creased further, and he gave her what felt like his first real smile since they'd come in. "I know," he said.

She snorted. "You know a lot of things."

"I do."

"I bet you don't know what I'm thinking," she challenged him.

The coffeemaker sputtered and hissed as the last of the water went through the percolator, and he blinked as if torn from a reverie. He turned to the machine and poured the coffee. She stared at the table as he set a steaming Space Needle coffee mug down before her. Wet, warm air curled upward from the cup in a slow coil, caressing her face. She inhaled deeply, relishing the scent of the beverage.

"You're thinking you must be crazy," he said as he filled the void across from her at the table. His fingers clutched around his own cup, he took a sip from his coffee. His lip curled, he winced, and blew softly over his mug, dispersing steam.

She leaned closer, fingertips brushing her cup. "Why am I thinking I must be crazy?"

"You're here, aren't you?" he said. He winked and took another sip only to grimace. "And it's certainly not the coffee that's keeping you."

"I like your trailer," she replied, daring a sip of her own. Bitter, acrid warmth hit her tongue, and she grimaced. At least it wasn't too hot. Her tongue remained unscathed. "I hate your coffee, but I like your trailer."

He nodded. "It is very bad coffee, isn't it?"

"It is."

Silence stretched between them.

He leaned back in his seat, resting his palms behind his head, and he contemplated her for what seemed like ages, contemplated her with the oddest expression. He seemed uncharacteristically lost at first, lost, mapless, wondering where he was going.

"I haven't done this in a long time," he confessed.

"Done what?"

He stared at her for a long, quiet moment, his face unreadable, and she found herself imagining what he might say. Lived. Loved. Taken a girl home. Had bad coffee. She didn't know for sure. Couldn't know. She wondered if, perhaps, she'd found somewhat of a kindred spirit. A commitment-phobe, knocked unexpectedly off his perch as a free agent by someone who should have been part of only a single night of his life.

Perhaps.

She watched him as he tortured himself with another sip of coffee. And another. He said nothing, gave her no clues. She watched his hands as he slipped them back over his forehead and ran his fingers through his hair. He always seemed to do that when he thought about things. Toiled with his hair. She liked it, because it meant she could watch his hands. He had such beautiful hands. Long, graceful fingers. Perfect for holding a scalpel.

Perfect for touching her.

Perfect.

"Thank you for bringing me here," she said.

He quirked a patented grin, and the space between them clicked. His personality settled like fog over the Sound after a storm. Quiet, but dangerous. Thick, unmovable, except on his own terms. He'd found familiar territory. Derek Shepherd, he was. And he could certainly romance a woman into bed.

His presence crackled against hers like a broken wire flirting with water. Little zaps of energy popped in the inches between them. She wanted to touch him, if only for a thrill of shock.

"There is one very nice thing about being here instead of your place," he said.

"And what is that?"

"My roommates won't interrupt," he said, his tone low and whisper soft, pleased, like he'd caught his canary and was roasting it over a spit with glee.

"What roommates?" she said.

"Precisely. I'll have you know I'm kicking myself."

Her heartbeat thrummed. "For what?" she asked, but the question was more rhetorical than anything. She knew.

His elbows slid forward on the table. The cushion at his back moaned. His pupils seemed to swirl, black fathom upon black fathom. She saw her blushing face reflected in each one as a milky, translucent ghost.

His palm brushed her cheek. "Waiting this long to show you," he said. Then he leaned across the table and kissed her.

His lips tasted bitter, like freshly crushed coffee beans, but the salt and softness of his skin made what had been a horrible brew into something exotic and exciting. She closed her eyes, grip on her coffee cup forgotten. Steam from the cups wafted between them, but his warmth eclipsed it in the space between one roaring heartbeat and the next. Thump. Thump. Fire meandered along the skin of her throat, coming to a stop at the crook where her throat met her chest.

"How do you do this to me," he murmured, but it wasn't exactly a question.

She twined her fingers through his hair, arcing backward. "One thing, I do know," she countered.

"Oh?"

"You can't blame it all on me, Mr. If-You-Know-Me-You'll-Love-Me."

His breath stopped. Her breath stopped. Where had that come from? Why had she said that? The air snapped with tension, but he didn't ask. Didn't ask the obvious question, and so she didn't have to come up with an answer. Not yet. His skin shivered as though a humming current ran through it, and the two of them hung in stillness for one second, two seconds, three. A fourth ticked in her mental space, and then he started to move again, recovered, recovering.

"That wasn't my best moment," he admitted, and she let him tread away from that space. That dangerous space that stole both of their breaths away from them. It was fine, for now.

Fine.

"Kiss me, Derek," she commanded, and he gifted her with that rumble-y, sexy laughter she loved so much.

A smirk creased his features.

In a move that screamed expert premeditation, he took the coffee cups and dumped them in the sink.

Then he pounced.

In the space of heartbeats, she had his long, sinewy body against her. He pulled her from the seat and pressed her against the kitchen counter top. She pushed her hands underneath his shirt, felt the rise and fall of his abdomen as he breathed against her.

An erotic waltz tapped out the seconds. She shuffled left, and he plundered right. She shuffled right, and he pillaged left. A frenzied misstep, a collision of skin and groans and heartbeats, and the waltz became a crashing plunge. The room spun and tilted as he fixed the problem, flipping her around with a violent twist and a dip. The edge of the table reminded her spine of its existence with pain, and the breath flew out of her, but it didn't matter. None of it mattered except Derek, and a little pain was... Sort of a turn on. A razor sort of edge that she enjoyed dancing along, from time to time. Worth it. Worth it if he--nibbled her earlobe. His fingers tangled in her hair, in her shirt. He spread his right palm by her ear, fighting for balance, but his skin slipped with a squeak. His body collapsed against her as he lost his purchase, bringing him close to her, closer.

"Ow," he muttered, hot breath against her skin. "You okay?"

His weight against her lessened. The bitter scent of coffee pervaded, but she didn't care. Didn't care because of the way he stared at her. Hungry. Desperate. Wanting. She felt like his life raft in that moment, and she couldn't bring herself to care about anything else at all.

"Fine," she panted. "Your table..."

"Fine," he muttered.

Through the side window of his trailer as she lay on her back and looking backward, the dark, green wilderness beyond formed a peculiar horizon against the twisted gnarl of his hair below. He captured her mouth, drinking her down. Her knees found his hips. She drove herself against them.

His roaming hands stopped over her breasts. He fumbled. **Ping. **A button hit the table and bounced off into infinity, somewhere in the muzzy black beyond his body.

"Sorry," he said. His hands found another button.

"Whatever," she panted.

Ping. He breathed against her ear with a sound torn somewhere between laughter and moaning. "I'm usually very good with buttons."

"That one was loose before," she said.

The next three, he did manage. Barely. And then he graced her with another thrilling failure. Ping.

"I hope you didn't like that shirt."

"I'm sure you'll pay for it," she growled. She dipped her hands into his pants, underneath the waistband of his boxers, tangling her fingers in the hot forest of coarse, curly hair that wound a path from his belly button to his groin.

"Hmm. What kind of payment did you have in mind?"

He drove himself against her, shoving her body against the table with force enough to show her the electricity sparking between them. Stars. Pretty. "Mere," he blurted, more like a curse or a wild yelp or... He recovered, chuckling in her ear, and repeated her name more with amusement and awe than desperation. "Mere. Mere..."

She rubbed her thumb against the flat, brass button that promised to gift her with his body, and shimmied it against his skin to catch the lip of the button hole. Release. His zipper shrieked as she yanked it down. He sucked in a breath, so desperate and deep she thought he might collapse against her. His feet scuffed the floor as his powerful body sought traction.

She braced his hips with her thighs and dragged him against her, merciless.

"Expensive buttons," he muttered, hot and flushed.

She pressed the heel of her palm against him, rutting against his length from base to tip. His muscles strained.

"Jesus," he hissed, and her lips flattened into a grin. She kissed his throat. The stubbly space under his jaw. Licked the cleft of his chin. His lips. Wandered to his nose. He pressed against her, seeking more, seeking his fill, seeking something.

"Worth the price?" she whispered.

"Mmm." He kissed her. "Oh, yes." He tasted the line of her jugular, scorched her skin with his tongue. "Worth every penny."

His sweater, soft against her skin, had to go. She yanked at the hem, and he shifted against her. The garment flew through her blurry view field, off into that strange horizon. So, so fired. His shirt fell victim to the layoffs next, and he laughed and squirmed as she pushed each button free with meticulous care. They fought each other, fought like a pair of tornadoes, until his pants lay in a tangle at his ankles, and hers? Hers lay somewhere near his windshield after being launched there like a bottle rocket, though she couldn't quite recall who had thrown them. He fared far better with her bra than he had her buttons, unclasping it one-handed.

He nudged her legs further apart with his hips, mashing up against her. She feathered her hands at his sides, felt the ripples of his ribs as they expanded and collapsed with each heaving breath. The skin over his left hip slid under her palm, smooth, supple, and warm. She moved her hand between them, tracing the wiry hairs low, lower, and cupped him.

He sucked a breath inward, and his eyes flashed with wild, thoughtless frenzy.

"Derek," she panted. It was very hard to think as he dragged his body against her, kissing her throat, her chest, her stomach, and lower.

"What?" he muttered. His knees thumped against his carpet.

"Condom?"

"I know," he replied, his voice low, and thick, and rough. "In a minute. I'll get one in a--"

The room focused for a moment, and she felt like she were a rubber band, strung up and ready to fly. His palms spread her wide, slow, petting, and then he kissed her there.

She broke, moaning until her voice had wrung itself out, until she was hoarse with desperation. Her hands struggled to find anything to hold, anything to latch onto, and her toes curled against the lip of the table. He kissed her again, and what little was left of her thought processes screeched to a jarring halt. Her lower body tensed, and she choked. Her lips peeled back in a harsh grimace that probably looked like pain. But it wasn't pain. God, it wasn't pain.

She snapped up at the waist, driving into him. "Derek," she whined with what little coherency she could muster. "Please..."

Her feet slipped off the table as she twitched, begging for it. Her breath arrived in throaty, short gasps. He touched her until she felt as though she were wrapped in him, his musky, sweaty warmth all around her. They hadn't done this before. This was new. This was...

Falling.

She came undone, shuddering with the force of it. It. Him. And then she lay there, nerveless and spent. When she saw his face again, his eyes looked wild, pleased, and lecherous. "Now, condom," he stated. He shuffle-stepped out of the pile of his pants and his boxers and his other things.

"Okay," she murmured.

He enveloped her in his arms and carried her to the bed as she regained her senses, one by one. Sight and touch were the first to make a peace offering. Stars. Soft. He lay her gently against his bed, and she blinked, staring at the stars through his sunroof. Pinpricks of white light, distant through a brief hole in the clouds, twinkled in and out, shocks against a carpet of black sky. They disappeared as she watched, overtaken once again by what would soon be the pitter-patter of a rainstorm.

She knew her ears worked when she heard the drawer by the bed trundle open. The condom packet crinkled as he tore it open. He rolled it over his erection and turned. He was still quite ready, and she knew the rest of her body had started to work again when a sharp, green glow cast the space between them with ectoplasmic brilliance, because she found the strength to giggle.

"Glow-in-the-dark?" she said as she sat up. She brushed a sweat-dampened bang out of her eye. "Seriously?"

"They were on sale," he confessed.

"A condom sale?"

"Buy one box, get the next box free," he said. "I was feeling lucky."

"Lucky."

He smirked. "Yes, lucky. You're very good for my ego, Dr. Grey."

The sheets whispered as he moved toward her. She kissed him. "Your ego doesn't need any help, Dr. Shepherd."

"You'd be surprised," he told her, and then his voice dropped deep, low, and rumble-y. Each syllable made her insides quiver. Every grunt and every groan became like a purr. She caressed his skin, falling back against the sheets, head cradled by a pillow that smelled just like him, swathed in sheets that smelled just like him, cowed under the weight of this man. Derek Shepherd. Her Derek Shepherd.

She blinked as he eclipsed the sky above with the halo of his sex-wild hair and his flexing muscles. Her fingers wandered down his spine, coming to a rest at his ass. He kissed her lips until she felt swollen, abused, and loved to death all in the space of five breaths, and then he speared her.

She found home when his voice cracked, and he said her name like he was a man finding religion in the opiate haze of her sex. "Meredith." It was the first time she'd heard her name said like that, like he'd found her light, and it'd pulled him out of the deepest dark. She felt dirty and spiritual all in the space of one thrust, and lain to waste in two.

"Meredith," he said again. "I'm going to make you forget I'm glowing." He smirked, and she would have laughed, would have. But she was beyond caring about the glow, about anything beyond wanting to hear her name said again. Said like that. He pushed against her, and she moaned as he began to work in earnest, his breaths buffeting her body.

He kissed her. "Meredith," he told her.

And true to his word, he did make her forget.

*****


	2. Chapter 2

Derek Shepherd had nothing in his closet. Well, two pairs of jeans, three pairs of khakis, a small collection of button down shirts, two sweaters, four t-shirts, and a few miscellaneous other things – not that she was necessarily counting -- that she couldn't categorize in her panic.

And it **was** panic.

Because this wasn't normal. Not even for a man who hated shopping. Not when he was nearly-forty. How could a man who had lived nearly four decades have only four t-shirts? Did he hate shopping?

And how could a man from Manhattan hate shopping, anyway?

Manhattan was the bastion of all things capitalism and fashionista. He wore trendy sweaters over button-down shirts as though he were intentionally sporting layers of gift wrap. Unwrap me, ladies, and look at what you get. Which meant he wasn't just a slob who had no concept of his looks and how to work them. Those men wore t-shirts with holes and faded mustard stains that they hoped no one would notice. Or they attempted to wear suits – usually wrinkled because they couldn't iron to save their mothers -- to fake women into thinking they knew what to do with clothing, other than taking it off.

But he didn't even have a business suit. A camel hair coat and some slacks, yes, but no fancy ties, nothing. And no boxes either. His closet had clothes, and no boxes, but he'd just moved. Moving and boxes were essential bedfellows.

Right?

She bit her lip. She was being irrational. Irrational and crazy and... Not a single box. Nothing in his closet. Three pairs of shoes. That was it. What human being--

A refugee, forced to flee with what he could carry, and that was it. Maybe he wasn't an ax-murderer. Maybe it was...

The witness protection program?

She clenched her teeth until her vision started to fuzz with black spots, and made herself stop, forced her brain to stop. "Shut up," she whispered at herself. "You're being a freak." And she was rifling through his closet. Which was wrong. Patently wrong.

She was a snooping bandit. A shifty burglar of secret thoughts and desires and...

But he had left the closet open. Which meant he wanted her to see it, right? It was next to the bed. It'd been the first thing she'd seen upon opening her eyes to dim, cloud-filtered sunshine. He lived in a box the size of her living room. If he left a door open, she would see it, and he had to know that.

Her fingers clenched around the soft, worn navy t-shirt she'd found. It was wrong to snoop. Wrong.

But...

She took a deep breath, sighing as she let the tension out of herself, let the scent of cedar and male talk her down off the proverbial ledge. The hanger clinked. The shirt did smell really nice. The navy had begun to fade in places, visible scuffs in the dye where it appeared almost white. The fabric had been worn to velvet softness, though there were no holes. He must have worn it dozens of times. She tried to picture it.

Did he go to baseball games? Or fireworks? Or maybe this was his lawn-mowing shirt. His Mr. Fix-it shirt. Maybe he read books on his deck in this shirt and a pair of pajama pants.

She pulled the shirt over her head and let it fall against her naked skin, wrapped herself in the scent of his fabric softener and the essence of him that a washer would never erase. The shirt came to her mid-thigh, and she was swimming in the sleeves, which stopped below her elbow. But it felt soft, and warm, and him, and...

She sighed, hugging herself.

Him. Wrapped around her. Her muscles relaxed, and worry over the situation dissolved.

She could get used to it.

Him. Around her. A cloak of quiet, sexy, not-nearly-as-arrogant-as-she'd-thought.

She wanted it more.

The cabin door thwacked against the frame as he bustled through, bundled up in a soaked windbreaker, sweats, and flip flops, a cooler in hand. She looked up, startled at the noise. Blush spread across her cheeks, and she crossed her arms over her chest as he kicked off the muddy flip flops, stamped his bare feet against the welcome mat, and then brushed off his windbreaker kind of like a wet dog, spraying water everywhere.

He looked toward the bed as he set the cooler on the table by the door. His gaze caught her standing like a shrinking violet at his closet, and he grinned. Freaking morning people. That was her first reaction.

Her second happened more slowly, aged like wine in her brain, and bloomed against her awareness as she swirled her thoughts, heady and intoxicating. She didn't think she'd ever seen a look like that before.

His gaze wasn't a look that said, "Let's have more sex." Though she would have, and he would have, too. It was a look that said he would enjoy the moments between intimacy just as much. Like when they stared at each other over bowls of muesli. Or dug for a clot in a man's spine based solely on the faith that they would find one. Or, perhaps, drank horrible coffee and talked.

Even first thing in the morning, when her hair was a snarled rat's nest of disarray, and her makeup was smudged and horrid, his eyes told her several things. She was perfect. He desired her. And she was welcome to snoop in his closet until she found the freaking road to Narnia if it made her happy.

She lowered her hands to her sides and let him look.

He did.

"Hi," she said, her voice feather soft with its first real use of the day.

"Morning," he said as he shrugged his windbreaker away, revealing bare, perfect skin. "You look good in my shirt."

"I feel good in your shirt," she assured him. "I... Just a minute."

She fled into the matchbox-sized bathroom. She flipped the seat down on the toilet, because he was apparently one of those guys who left it up all the time. And then she sat, running her palms over her thighs. What was this? She didn't have warm, gooey, born-again thoughts like this. This wasn't normal. This was...

Normal for everybody else.

Not her.

She blinked at the sight of his razor, safety, not electric, sitting on the lip of the sink. The quad-blade had small, dark bits of stubble still stuck on the silver edges. She found a few more bits and pieces of hair as her gaze wandered across the white porcelain of the sink. A small puddle of water and a few specs of old shaving cream had collected on top of the drain.

She imagined him running the water, trying to clean out the sink after shaving in the morning. She also imagined him giving up because, really, he did have a lot of stubble. Five-o'clock was an epic myth. He was usually sharp to kiss by noon.

Fascinated, she analyzed the sight before her, object by object.

Derek Shepherd used a Crest toothbrush, unwaxed mint dental floss, and baking soda toothpaste (with extra whitening power). He liked bar soap for his hands. Not the gooey squirt-on kind that came in a bottle. And he'd used a band-aid recently. Two lone plastic tabs at the bottom of his trashcan said so.

She refused to open his medicine cabinet. That would be...

No. Yes?

Curiosity burned her mind like kindling exploding into a brushfire, and she swung the cabinet door open as she bit her lip. Surely, he wouldn't have anything personal in there if he didn't want her to see it. Surely. It would be stuffed in the plastic bags of unsorted junk he invariably had hidden in his luggage compartments to fool her into thinking he was neat and mostly tidy. Right? Besides, he'd probably cataloged her entire persona. The only access to her life he didn't have already was a damned key to let himself in when he wanted.

Actually, she realized as she stroked the side of the mirror and stared, he didn't have *anything* notable in the medicine cabinet at all. Nothing that said I'm-a-fugitive-on-the-run. Or an ax murderer.

Or a liar.

No. Just a small bottle of Tylenol PM. Rubbing alcohol. A packet of band-aids. No prescription bottles or cough syrup or chemicals of any kind. Nothing. Not even vitamins. She closed the door.

"He drinks, but he doesn't medicate?" she asked the mirror. Her reflection appeared puzzled.

She checked off several more mental points in the column of health nut, and began to wonder if he kept a first aid kit somewhere, perhaps with a small scalpel, a packet of sutures, and other surgeon things. He couldn't possibly expect to live in the middle of nowhere without that. Right?

Which meant he had some other storage area. Some other treasure trove of Derek information. Somewhere. But when she came out of the bathroom, she found him at the kitchen counter in nothing but his boxers, and promptly forgot her mission to find it.

His wet sweatpants had been discarded in a puddle of cloth, and his windbreaker hung up on a hook by the door, dripping. He moved here and there like a morning busybody as he pulled out a cutting board, a frying pan, and some knives for... something. He'd never done that at her house. Stood there in such a blasé state of undress while he made the kitchen his home.

Then again, here he didn't have a cadre of his professional inferiors ready to barge in at any moment. Well, except her, though she wasn't a cadre. And she doubted he considered her when contemplating his modesty, given that she'd already seen everything he had to offer.

But, while she had seen it all, she didn't think she'd seen him like this. Accessible. In daylight. At a distance. And, as she stared at Derek Shepherd in plain, statuesque relief, she decided she was all for ill considering his modesty as much as possible in the future.

All. Freaking. For it.

He had scrawny legs. Nothing but muscle, to be sure, but lean and toned, not bulky. He more than made up for it, though, with his biceps, and the way his powerful shoulders tapered to his skinny hips, giving him sleek, perfect proportions.

She licked her lips, letting her gaze trail from his feet, along the lines of his legs, to the wisps of black hair trailing from the waistline of his boxers to his bellybutton, and up. Smooth, sculpted skin, all the way to his pectorals and another triangle of dark, wispy hair greeted her. He hadn't shaved yet this morning after all, giving him a scruffy, my-face-is-a-forest look, and the hair on his head stuck out in all sorts of delicious directions.

She closed the distance between them, pulled like a magnet to an opposite pole, and wrapped her arms around his waist. His warm skin greeted her, and she grinned against his back as she felt him relax and lean into her embrace. That was something she could get used to. Familiarity. Warmth.

"What are you making?" she asked, kissing his shoulder blade.

He proffered the cooler he'd brought from outside to her, and tilted the top so that she could see into its depths. A familiar, oily, fishy scent hit her nose.

She peered down and found a dull, dead eye staring back at her.

Years ago, the overwhelming instinct of her inner girl would have wanted to flinch, but that had been long lost in the rigorous reprogramming of medical school. Her inner surgeon absorbed the sight with a curious, practiced calm. Ooh, guts, was all her mind came up with, and instead of shrieking, she leaned closer to his body, and closer to his quarry.

"A dead fish," she said.

"Trout," he corrected.

She looked up at him as he placed the cooler back on the counter top. "For breakfast?"

"It's fresh," he assured her as he pulled the tail fin of the trout just over the lip of the cooler. "I just caught it."

He started scraping scales away with a butter knife, stroking the fish with the blade from tail to head. The scales flew in different directions, but smacked against the sides of the cooler, leaving him and her both safe from projectiles.

"You caught that," she said.

His posture puffed up. In that moment, he could have been a peacock. "Yes," he said.

"A fish."

He grinned. "Trout. With a pole, yes."

"And we're eating it?"

"That was the plan," he said, but his knife hand halted, and he turned to her with a frown. "Unless you don't like fish." His gaze searched her face with worry.

"I do," she said, and he relaxed. "Can't say I've tried fish for breakfast, though."

"Smoked salmon and bagels in the morning. Surely, you had it in Boston?"

"I'm a cereal girl. I cook cereal."

He laughed. "Or cold pizza?"

"Or cold pizza," she confirmed.

"Well," he said. "This will be a first for both of us then."

He pulled the fish from the cooler and placed it on the cutting board. He switched to a sharper knife, and with surgical efficiency, he slipped the blade into the underside of the fish toward the tail, and began to move it forward to the head with a sawing motion.

"How is it a first for both of us?" she asked.

He shrugged. "I've never eaten a fish I caught for breakfast before."

"I guess Manhattan isn't really known for its breakfast fishing?"

His knife came to a pause. "It's not really the sort of setting where you find yourself with a lake in the backyard. I used to go out in the afternoons with..." His voice trailed away into silence. Bloodless white seeped across the skin of his hands, and his body went still in her arms. His muscles trembled like a coiled spring, but just as quickly as he'd shut down, he cleared his throat and continued. "I used to go out with some friends to kick back a couple beers. But it was more about beer than fishing, and it was a bit more of a trek than this."

He gestured vaguely at the door of the trailer, but she didn't look in that direction, curiosity about his theoretical lake squelched by the mysterious quicksilver shift in his behavior. She peered at him, thinking she'd imagined it, at first, but then her gaze trailed to his hands. A casual observer never would have seen it. Never. But she'd seen Derek Shepherd in surgery many times by then. She knew how his fingers worked with a knife. Quick, economical, masterful, and calm under pressure.

What he did now was none of those things.

"Still," she said with morbid fascination as she watched him gut the fish as though it were a mortal enemy. "This is like the salmon capital of the United States. How can this be your first Seattle breakfast fish if you like fishing?"

"I'll have you know that Alaska is the best place to catch salmon in the United States," he said, his tone calm, even teasing, like he hadn't just tried to murder his already dead fish. "And this isn't salmon. It's trout. Salmon are saltwater fish except when they're spawning."

She frowned. "You're avoiding the question."

"I'm not avoiding anything."

The frenzied motion of his hands relaxed and lengthened. He put the knife aside with a thunk and took another breath. He grinned at her, but a cold tension spread through her like a rot. Because his was a fake sort of grin. One that didn't quite hug his eyes the way it should have if he'd meant it, but she had to give him credit for his acting.

She glanced at the knife he'd placed on the cutting board. She'd been mostly joking to herself about the ax-murderer thing. But. She felt like she had a five thousand piece jigsaw puzzle and no sort of picture to guide her to the finished product.

Derek Shepherd was a gentle man. She knew it. He touched her like a man touched something he cherished. Something he didn't want to break. Like she were a tiny trinket made of blown glass. He cut people to save lives, and always seemed to spend the extra five minutes to learn more about who he was saving, to talk to them. Watching him tear apart a dead fish for food would be one thing, but he... seemed almost vengeful about it. Vengeful like...

Not an ax murderer. Like a victim finding power.

Her question from the night before coiled in her gut.

What happened to you?

"What can I say?" he whispered, almost as if he'd heard her inner turmoil. He leaned closer. Awkwardly, because he couldn't touch her with his bloody, gut-covered hands. His body slanted against hers, his skin humming millimeters from her. Her breath slowed in time with his. She lost herself in the drowning, pleading black hole of his intent stare. Save me, it said. Or was she imagining things. She must be. She--

The space between them collapsed, and he kissed her. The world popped as though it had exploded. Her fingertips carved dents into his flesh, but she didn't hear his grunt, didn't hear anything. His lips chased hers, skin-to-skin.

"I really haven't had time to fish," he said.

"Time?" she parroted against his lips, dizzy, grip failing. How could he do that? How could he take her breath away?

He leaned. They kissed again.

When they pulled apart, he panted, taking more than several moments to compose himself. A grunt rumbled in his throat. He blinked. And then his look of stunned arousal faded into a smirk that he definitely meant.

"I just got my new gear two weeks ago, and spent the last week at your house," he said. "I haven't had time."

She swatted him but couldn't suppress a smile. "Well, aren't you a hope crusher or whatever."

His gaze brightened, and he winked, as if to say that's Mr. Hope Crusher, to you. He leaned back against the counter, lips parted as he stared at her with a sort of Christmas morning wonderment, an is-this-really-for-me kind of disbelief.

"What?" she said.

He shrugged and turned to the counter. He put the gutted fish back into the cooler, shutting the lid with a decisive, swift motion, and then ran his hands under the faucet. "I'd like to show you something."

"Okay," she said. "Now?"

The faucet squeaked as he turned it off and bent to towel dry his hands. He turned back to her and smiled. "Yes. Follow."

His fingers intertwined with hers, warm, soft. He shuffled backward.

"But I'm not dressed," she protested.

"Neither am I. No one will see," he assured her. The screen door snapped on its hinges as he pushed backward, pulling her with him. "It was a bit cold when I went out this morning, but it warmed up fast now that the sun is out. Well. Sort of out."

"Seattle sun, you mean."

He grinned. "Yeah. That kind."

She blinked, letting him pull her outside. She squinted, the sudden illumination painful despite the overcast, gray sky. A bright, burning circle of incandescent white had carved itself against the cloud cover to the east. Mist hung in the clearing like a low, fluffy blanket, stopping at her knees, and the air above it seemed like a laden sponge, not raining, but it might as well have been.

He was right, though. It wasn't too chilly, and she pressed onward. She padded across his deck and into the sproingy, wet grass, spurred by the engrossing, excited look on his face.

In the daylight, she realized just how much in the middle of nowhere they actually were. The clearing extended hundreds of feet, sloping up on one side to dead, open air and no trees. A black cloud of birds swooped and darted in the distance, their chirping muffled in the water-clogged air.

She pointed vaguely in that direction. "Is that a cliff?"

He nodded. "Yes. But we're going this way."

The other side of his property sloped down on a gradual incline, almost gradual enough to be called flat, but not quite. A quick glance around confirmed nothing but trees, trees, more trees, and other foliage in any other direction. They slogged through the grass, which grew in height as they left the immediate area around the trailer. As their strides ate the distance and spat it out behind them, what had been low cut vegetation now whipped against her thighs.

She looked back, but mist and distance had enveloped the trailer long ago, leaving her with the feeling of being set adrift in a sea of nature's space. A soft wind picked up, cold fingers against her skin. She shivered, skipping forward to catch up as he strode through his small piece of nowhere.

"You really are kind of on your own out here," she said, panting.

"Hmm," he purred in agreement, but his gaze was fixed ahead.

"What's..." she began to ask, but she stopped. The sound of water sloshing caressed her eardrums, and ahead, a thick carpet of cattails and green reeds hovered above the mist. The muddy grass under her feet turned into worn, polished wood. And then the world opened up into a vast bowl of gray.

She felt like she was stuck in a painting. Mist clung to the edges of the water like spun cotton candy, but toward the horizon, she saw nothing but black water under a cloudy sky, and the distant green of more vegetation at the other edge. A heron swooped low over the water, beak scooping into the water. Waves lapped under the dock, burbling softly.

"This is where I caught breakfast," he said.

At the edge of the dock, she saw a small folding chair, tackle box, and long fishing pole. Her inner city girl cringed, and then relaxed when she processed her setting, really processed it. Who would steal his things out here? There was no one.

Nothing.

She stepped to the edge of the dock, and curled her toes over the side. Nothing but mist and water and air for hundreds of feet in any direction except behind her. Frogs played a game of call and response, creating an undulating sort of heartbeat. Ripples pierced the glassy surface of the water here and there as things from underneath came to greet the world above. She closed her eyes and listened to the pulse of life around her.

"This is what you do when you don't come home with me?" she said.

"I've been practicing my casts when I get a chance, but..." His voice trailed away as he came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. "Well, obviously I've been a bit busy."

She stepped away from the edge and turned. "What's there to practice?" she asked. "Don't you just... murder a worm and pray?"

He smirked. "It's a bit more involved than that."

"May I try?" she said, gesturing at his discarded fishing pole.

She bent over to pick it up, expecting for a moment that he might get fidgety about her touching his sacred man things, but he didn't. His palm found her wrist, and the touch electrified her, but he didn't admonish her. Instead, he looked delighted, and supervised her with a teacher's enthusiasm as she baited the line with a fake fly, not a worm, as it turned out. He melded into the space behind her, and they cast the line together.

"Normally, it's a bit more active than this," he said as the line thunked into the water.

She turned to him, raising an eyebrow as she gave him her best, suggestive grin. "More active?"

A thrill ran down her spine as his fingers tightened against hers. His lips parted, and his tongue worried at his teeth as though he were tasting something sweet, delectable. Watching his jaw muscles play for control, she leaned into his body. He swayed like a willow tree in the breeze, but recovered.

"Fly fishing," he managed. "You have to cast a lot. We're just letting the line float. And you have a dirty mind, Mere."

"Hypocrite."

"Hmm. A sexy hypocrite, though."

She bumped him with her hip, snorting with laughter. The fishing pole jerked with her body, followed by a slosh of water as the line pulled, but the sound seemed distant, muffled, lost in the orbit of them. His arm tightened around her hip without any sort of suggestive hint in the motion.

"It can take a while," he murmured, taking a step back. His thigh nudged edge the lawn chair.

He sat, and she curled against him like a cat. "I don't mind," she said, more a sigh than a sentence.

They settled into a comfortable quiet, breathing, watching the occasional heron. The pace of life on the dock seemed glacial, but she didn't feel like she needed to fill the silence with anything at all, not an explanation or banter, a question or a kiss. It was enjoyable, in his vicinity, simply to be.

She loved that.

"I like to do this when I get home after a long shift," he said against her ear. His lips brushed her earlobe.

She smiled. "It's peaceful."

"It helps me get perspective."

"On what?"

"Everything," he said, and she pulled back. A strange look quivered on his face. She saw it. She did. And then it was gone, dispersed, leaving a practiced, bewildered sort of blankness behind as he stared across the gray lake.

"Derek, what happened to you?" she said. "In New York. What happened?"

Breath huffed in his chest. Almost a laugh, but not quite. He pressed his lips together, shook his head in some sort of private denial. "Why are you so sure something happened?" he said.

She shrugged. "I don't know. You just seem... Like an uprooted tree or whatever."

His lip twitched, a ghost of a grin breaking through his earlier displeasure. "It's corny," he murmured, kissing her forehead. "It's very corny. But the sexy hypocrite in me is begging to make a joke about wood."

Avoiding. He was avoiding again. "It's just..." she began, struggling with what to say.

What right did she have to pry? He'd shared his home and more when she'd asked. She had yet to even mention her mother. Or her Europe escapades. Or volunteer anything about herself, really, beyond what he asked about directly. And yet, there she was, like a spoon tapping an eggshell, discovering the essence that made him Derek. Snooping. Prodding. She saw the myriad of cracks. The more she spoke to him, the more she learned. She expected the shell to shatter on its own if she just gave him some time. Why did she have to keep tapping at it?

His arms tightened around her, one palm slipping under her shirt to pet her thigh, skin to skin. It was the sort of gesture that, in the past, had often led her to sex, but there was no lust in the gesture. Not there on the lake under the gray sky watching the birds and the fishing line. Just comfort.

Another thing she could get used to.

"Your roots," she said. "There's nothing here. Uprooted tree."

"You're here."

"I'm not roots. Boxes are roots. You barely have any things. And I--"

"I think you might be mine..." he said.

She froze in his arms. "I'm really not..." her voice trailed away as she struggled for something to say. Anything. And then he looked at her again.

He had beautiful eyes. She knew that. On a normal day, his irises were a deep sea sort of blue, cut with razor shards of azure, but what she loved in particular about them was the way they shifted with the environment like a mood stone or a weather vane. In a bright operating room, they were sharp, crystal blue, endless, soulful, empathic. In a dark bedroom, they were glassy obsidian, lusty and demanding. Today, in the Seattle not-sunshine, surrounded by clouds and misty gloom, obsidian and crystal met in battle and coalesced into an endless, hopeful slate gray. Hopeful.

Derek Shepherd hoped.

And the mere thought that all that desire and aspiration for something better came to bear on herself, her tiny frame...

It desolated her.

"I'm..." she stammered. "I..."

She didn't even hear the splash. Didn't feel the tug on the line. Her hands, nerveless in her lap, nearly lost the fishing pole before he closed his warm grip around hers and held it steady. His gaze shifted to the water and back to her, bright and brimming with excitement. With Pride.

"You caught a fish," he murmured, melting what little was left of her.

"I caught. What?"

The water beyond the dock frothed and spat as something struggled, desperate, just underneath the surface.

His eyebrows peaked, and he grinned. "Reel it in, Mere."

*****


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Notes: So sorry for the wait! I had intended to post this sooner, since it's a short part, but my week has been very busy. Thanks again everybody for reading and commenting. I'm happy to see that people have enjoyed the story!**

* * *

Meredith woke to the sound of the ocean at her ear, waves tumbling in, broken flat, and slipping away. Caught in hunter's nets of sleep, she listened for a long time before she realized how queer it was, waking to the sound of the ocean. Derek didn't live near the shore. Well, he did, and he didn't. His land might be close to the water, maybe even closer than at her own house, yes, but, not by much, and... Woods. Thicket. Trees. There seemed to be a lot more separating them from a cold plunge into the Pacific there at his trailer than there was at her house in Queen Anne Hill.

She lay there listening, warmth radiating against her cheek, and let the world solidify.

Derek.

He inhaled. He exhaled. She found her ocean in the soft rushes of air that gave him life. His heart thumped against his breastbone in the lulls, strong and perfect, as it carried away the oxygen he took softly in, and replenished his body from fingers to toes. The entire process was hypnotic, and she lay there for an eon, maybe two, ear against his solid chest, listening.

_The water spread out in front of the dock like a plane of mirror glass, flat and gray under the weight of the clouds, which looked ready to weep again. The wind ruffled the surface of the mirror, warping it, until the flock of starlings zipping toward the cover of the trees at the opposite bank looked fantastical and Escher in the reflected world. She watched, squinting, at the shimmer of blue-tinged peach under the surface, trying not to let sudden nerves infect her. Soon. Surely, soon. How deep was the water there? Maybe she shouldn't have pushed --_

_The peach blob grew larger. With a roar, Derek broke the surface. Water streamed down his skin, which was already trembling with chill. She was going to laugh. She was. Then he spluttered and slipped under the surface again. _

"_Derek," she called, not quite upset yet, but getting there. _

_Did he know how to swim? How stupid was she for... _

_He broke the surface, sucking in a lungful of air before disappearing in a desperate crash of water and panic. Panic. Panicking. Hecouldn'tswim. Whatdidshedo? Thiswasbad. "Derek!" she shrieked. Her feet skidded as she raced forward, sending the discarded fishing pole to the side of the walk with a clank. She knelt at the edge of the dock and reached out to help..._

_He erupted from the water like a dolphin. She didn't have a chance to blink, or think, or move. Strong, toned arms wrapped around her shoulders, the world tipped upside down, and a shock of cold sucked her down into murky darkness._

_Her bare feet hit the bottom of the lake in moments. On instinct alone, she scrunched her toes into the cold mud and pushed. Glacial cold rushed against her face. The gray sky above the water, hovering, warped, approached. She broke the surface, panting, shivering, sputtering. The air around her was muffled at first, but as the water poured away from her face and head, she heard deep, hearty laughter._

_Drowning people didn't laugh. That sneaky, rotten..._

"_Cold," she spat, shaking sopping hair from her eyes. "Oh, my god. Cold. Cold, cold..." She couldn't even bring herself to pull her arms away from her body. Keep warm. Keep heat in the torso. "Freaking..." A freestyle would make her stretch out. She thought of the little fish she'd just caught. It'd have given a guppy a scare in the Mr. Trout America pageant, but not much else, and when Derek had said that it would be too small to eat, they'd thrown him back. "How can fish even live in here? It's like a freaking ski trip."_

_"A ski trip?"_

_She looked at him and his smug, annoying smirk. "When you butt ski all the way down a freaking mountain and end up with a pack of snow plastered between your spine and your shirt and stuffed all down your pants. It's cold. It's freaking cold. And I can't believe you pulled me in. I thought you were drowning. You... You unbelievable bastard!"_

_He stared at her, open-mouthed, bewildered. "Butt-ski?"_

_"If you tell me you've never fallen and skated down a mountain on your ass, on top of... of this! I'll kill you, Derek Shepherd. I will."_

_His lower lip twitched. Not a shiver. His eyes sparkled, irises obsidian but warm in the gray light. "Yes, Meredith Grey, I've butt-skied."_

_"Good," she grumbled._

_His wet body slipped against her, skin to skin, and the struggle to keep her head above the liquid ice eased. "You got me first," he said against her ear, his voice soft and rich like a honey spread, and the faux-fury that kept her warm receded. "And you didn't even trick me. You just pushed. That takes moxie." _

_  
"Well," she said. "Remind me not to play this joke again until the summer. My moxie is hypothermic."_

_He shook his head, smiling as water droplets flew everywhere. "I love your moxie," he confessed. "We should definitely save it from a cold, harrowing death."_

"_Moxie isn't the only thing I'd like to save," she whispered. She traced a line down his abs with her finger. He looked down at the water, and she delighted at the short, desperate breath her touch wrought from his lips. The press of freezing water made it impossible to slip her hand underneath his waistband, but she cupped him through his boxers. The chill had definitely robbed him of certain attributes._

_They waded to the muddy bank. He sighed, running fingers through his hair. His boxers, plastered to his body, dripped. Rivulets of glistening water meandered down his shivering skin. _

"_I hear aerobic activity is an excellent way to recoup body heat," he said._

"_Derek, seriously, you should be arrested for your pickup lines."_

_He grinned. "Well, I need at least one adorable flaw, don't I?"_

"_Two, if you count the butt-skiing."  
_

_The air around them stilled, and he stared at her despite the shivers racking his frame. A sort of energy passed in the space between them, as though the air itself had become a well of discharging static electricity. He leaned closer, into her space, breathing, living, wanting. "Three," he said, his voice low and husky. "If you count how undone I am by you."_

Her eyes creaked open. In the dark blur of night, his skin sprawled out from her field of view like an alabaster beach. He faced away from her in the darkness, dreaming, lean body trembling in the grips of REM.

She lay a palm flat against his chest, petting the runnel of hair that breached the perfection of his naked skin like a tide pool. She twirled her fingers in the whorl at his breastbone. His nipples perked, and a deep, grating breath that wasn't a snore rushed over his lips. His head twitched, and he turned. His chin settled against the top of her head, and the lapping ocean waves resumed.

Closing her eyes, she sighed. Her lower body thrummed with heat and the ache of recent sex. Hours. They'd stayed in bed for hours. Every pore felt touched, worshiped, loved. He radiated against her, warm and solid, a hearthstone to her ear.

And she felt... Safe.

She listened for a long time to quiet of him breathing.

She listened until his body eased into a deep sleep cycle. His lips, his eyelids, and the tips of his fingers stopped twitching, his dream having abandoned him, and he lay still and silent, but the wave crashes remained.

She raised her head again, watching him. She placed a palm against his temple, cupping part of his forehead, part of his cheek. Dark, sharp stubble made him rough and weathered to the touch. She pushed a stray curl from his forehead and watched him intently, uncaring of the world beyond the bed.

"Derek," she whispered. The sudden intrusion of noise felt like a firecracker in her ear, and she tensed. He would wake up. He would. But his thick eyelashes didn't twitch. His body remained a motionless rock of muscle and sinew beside her.

"Derek?"

She bit her lip. His body didn't move. He was gone, deep in the thrall of sleep. He had always been a light sleeper at her house, always up in an instant if she uttered a word or moved. But had things ever been... this quiet? This... alone? She had roommates, and traffic sounds, but... there was nothing here. Nothing but the two of them in a private bubble of heat and sex and...

She blinked.

Perhaps, deep in his not-dreaming mind, he felt safe, too. Alone with her.

Or perhaps she was an overeager, hopeful freak.

"Derek," she said, one last time. She waited, baited breath, but he didn't twitch. His eyes didn't open. He was still. Why she said it, she didn't know, but the words burbled out like an unstoppable brook. "I think I might be in love with you. Maybe. I just..."

Thisisnotsafe.

Her heart thundered under her breastbone, and the bubble world that was him and her and nothing else popped into smithereens. She heard the crickets again. And the soft patter of raindrops on the roof, a random, happenstance plunking that made her think it was more likely water falling from the laden trees overhead than from actual rain. Something moved outside, big and slothful. A deer, foraging, a mutant raccoon the size of Texas, or perhaps even a bear.

Her fingers clenched, reminding her he was close, naked in her arms, and breathing.

Thisisnotsafe.

She bit her lip so hard she felt pain, and would have wondered if she might be tasting blood soon, but his undisturbed stillness carried onward, and the hypnotic insistence of his breath slowed the space around them.

He wouldn't know she'd said it. He was asleep. Deeply asleep.

The world around her narrowed. She lost track of the taps of the water on the roof. She couldn't remember the crickets. She traced a line down his torso with her index finger, counted the parade of his ribs, and the smooth, flat perfection of his abdominal muscles. She resettled her head against his breastbone and allowed him to lull her back to calm as air filled him and then left him empty in the repetitive procession of life. The thoughts of her ocean came alive underneath her ear.

He did move, then, but it was only to settle against her body. His grip tightened against her. His chin resettled against her hair.

And she was safe.

~FIN~


End file.
